Optical signal to noise ratio monitoring using variable phase difference phase portrait with software synchronization

In this paper, a novel optical signal to noise ratio (OSNR) monitoring method using 2-dimension (2-D) phase portrait is proposed and demonstrated, which is generated by using a single low-speed sampling channel with software synchronization technique. Moreover, variable phase difference is proposed to generate the X-Y pairs, which increases the tolerance of synchronization accuracy significantly. This method is a cost effective solution with simple system setup.